Why Sindragosa Sucks

I used to think that Sindragosa was a fun boss. I never understood why people complained about not liking the fight.

Now, after working on All You Can Eat in 10 man, Heroic 25 with my alliance guild and seeing normal 25 for the first time with my Horde guild, I’ve changed my opinion. Sindragosa is a real bitch. Here’s why:

Voice acting

::shudder:: Now I know why some people play with their game sound off.

It’s very easy to cast blame

This is a fight where it’s difficult to hide your mistakes. It’s very obvious when someone gets hit with a Frost Bomb or Blistering Cold, gets Ice Tomb positioning wrong or fails to drop Mystic Buffet stacks. You may as well have a big red arrow over your head saying “Look at me! I screwed up!” Being aware of every mistake results in me having some rather uncharitable thoughts about my guildies (and I’m sure it goes the other way when I make mistakes). This creates a rather negative raiding environment. I think of all the fights in ICC Sindragosa gives the most opportunities for error.

Doing nothing sucks

Having to stop casting in order to not blow yourself up is an interesting mechanic, but this fight takes it too far. RNG, especially on heroic, dictates how much I enjoy the fight. Getting Unchained Magic 3 times in a row means I get to stand around and do nothing for 90 seconds. This is not fun. Of course, from the hunter side of things, this fight rocks – I only have to stop dps to drop my stacks once in a blue moon.

Frost resist

This one doesn’t impact me too much, but expecting tanks to trade out their shiny ICC gear for crappy 213 frost resist gear is lame.

The whole fight just seems backwards

Sindragosa, the frost wyrm who’s been annoying people on the sign-in screen for months, the penultimate boss of Icecrown Citadel, the last obstacle between you and the Lich King. This fight should be epic. When you break it down though, being successful requires 3 things: stopping dps/healing, running away and hiding.

11 responses to “Why Sindragosa Sucks”

We actually spent an entire raid night learning All You Can Eat a couple of months back in our 25 man. We didn't get it that night, but then each normal Sindragosa kill we did after we spent 5 pulls working "All You Can Eat", and I think the very next time we came back to it, we got it.

I mention this because I truly believe that the time we spent working on All You Can Eat, as a raid, brought attention to a lot of the things that you need to be aware of as a raid when working on HM Sindgragosa and makes HM Sindragosa easier. People knew what to look for, people knew how to work with the ice tombs, people knew how to be cognisant of which debuff they had and how many stacks of Mystic Buffet they had.

It took us a month or so to finally work out a HM Putricide kill. It took us about 3 raid nights for a HM Sindragosa kill!

While All You Can Eat is a pain, it really does teach you *a lot* about the encounter. If you are having trouble with HM in 25, I would earnestly suggest that you try All You Can Eat for no other reason than to teach awareness for key aspects of the encounter 🙂

If people are having trouble with the Ice Tombs in phase 2 have people draw a map of Ice Block positioning for phase 2. Have them get some crayons and a sheet of paper and sketch it out and tape it to their monitor. (We had one guy use an dry erase marker on his monitor…but I don't recommend that!). Think of it like studying for an important exam, repitition is an important teacher! I used to write key terms and phrases on my bathroom mirror so I could "study" while getting ready for school. Same concept!

All in all…I mostly like the fight. While it can get drab if you get unchained with frequency, I do like that it requires some thought and some strategy to get through the encounter 🙂

We haven't devoted too much time to heroic Sindraosa 25 yet, maybe 15 or 20 attempts. We've only made it to the last phase once or twice so far. Working on All you Can Eat in preparation for heroic is certainly a good idea though. It taught me a lot about the timing of the debuff applications and made me realise how fussy the line of sight with the Iceblocks can be, especially when they're near the stairs.

I have a feeling Putricide would be easier for my guild and Sindragosa will be more of a stumbling block (haven't seen the prof on 25 yet though, so I can't say for sure – but we certainly found him easier in 10).

Mapping the Frost Tombs is something my horde guild does, but not alliance. There are a lot of people (like me) who are resistant to being given too much direction. People are generally pretty decent with the frost tombs, but there's the occasional time when people get a little too close to each other and get killed.

I think Sindragosa is getting so much of my frustration because of the amount I've seen her lately. It's unusual for my 10-man raid and both 25s to be working on the same boss in the same week. As I mentioned, my enjoyment of the fight is really RNG dependent. For my first HM 10 man kill I didn't get the caster debuff at all and I thought it was a great fight. I haven't been that lucky in 25 though and I feel so helpless not being able to heal.

I don't play with sounds, so that part doesn't bug me. Frost resist is kinda shitty, though I've only played on Normal so that wasn't an issue.

The doing nothing thing really does suck though. Being a dual wielder that focuses heavily on haste, then add Windfury to that? Incredibly annoying.

Of course the obvious is the Ice Tomb mechanic. I don't really care that it completely calls out the idiot. I'm used to people fucking up so royally that it's noticeable anyways…I just dislike mechanics where if one person screws up then it literally just destroys the attempt. Oh look, someone had their head up their ass and just Ice Tombed the entire raid, yay!

I get they keep moving more towards this RNG crap and having mechanics where if one person screws up then it's a wipe to make things "harder and more interesting" or whatever, but it's getting old for obvious reasons. I want fights to be interesting and technical, but I hate having to rely on every single person (Definitely in regards to 25 man) to not have their head up their ass because it just doesn't happen.

Me and Sindragosa have a love hate relationship. I hate her and she loves to kill me. I think I have nightmares about her voice acting. It haunts my dreams!

I too hate to stop casting, especially playing as a healer. There are some moments when I cannot even think to stop because the other healer is dead and one is ice blocked. The RNG here makes me want to pull my hair out.

With the Sack of Wonder providing upwards of 100 hit and expertise, it's a huge threat loss to actually swap over to the frost resist chest. Sure you could tank with just the belt and boots, but if you are working on heroic and you really want maximum damage reduction you have to hit that next tier of frost resist.

Frost resist works weird in that regard, where you have to hit a minimum number to start resisting any more frost resist. I actually posted about this in my guilds forums but it basically all comes from a discussion on the EJ forums here is the quote from Sephon who originally wrote about it:

"The thing to point out though is that RNG on resists is predictable. Its exactly like Sarth 3D all over again. Take you resist that you have, calculate worst case scenario, melee swing + breath < .5 seconds apart ( aka impossible for healers to get to you between the two ) and gear that much HP + buffer.

Its something that makes us bear tanks really good at what we do. With a little work you can figure that out and run with it. I don't have access to her in 25 myself but just find worse case scenario melee attacks ( search the parse for her hardest melee hits ) and then find your resist bracket you fall into and then base the breath on the lowest resist that you can possibly see ( aka the most damage her breath can ever do to you with the specific resist value you are using). Add them up, add in whatever HP buffer you wish to provide your healers and go with it. This buffer is personally taste so take you pick here, to me I would base it on who my healers are on me / how well I know they do. Its easier if you always work with the same tank healers, cause then you know what they can do, but this buffer is there play/oops room so be generous especially considering movement and LOS possibilities in phase 3.

If you check out the original Sarth 3d thread there was alot of testing and work done in that tanking thread that ended up with its own Resistances thread. Testing at the time narrowed the constant down fairly accurately, maybe within 2-6 resistance error to what you would see minimum percentage resistance. Basically this table was the final result.

Resistance Minimum Possible Resist128 10%219 20%340 30%510 40%765 50%

If you run with it let us know, would be interesting to see the merits of both routes by those able to run said content (Ill get there eventually but Im no longer tank for my guild, got me another full time feral bear so I am relegated to number crunching this stuff most the time =) )"

It's kind of annoying that it makes more sense to have a different tank tank until phase 3 and then once threat is no longer an issue have the bear tank step in as the OT for tank rotations.

We haven't really started META achievements in ICC 25, but we've done All You Can Eat in 10 man two weeks in a row and it's actually been really really simple for us. Probably has a lot to do with many weeks of already doing heroic as well as the 30% buff.

I think our tanks are using about 300 frost resist for hard mode in 25-man. They were getting smashed by the frost breath without it. I'll pay more attention to what they're wearing and the amount they resist next time.

I particularly dislike the fact that Phase 2 is so insanely unforgiving – like you can usually get through Phase 1, which takse about 5 minutes, and then phase 2 completely pwns you – so you have to go through the *same* thing all over again to work on the bit you're having trouble with. It's really demoralising and gives no sense of actual progression.

Yes, that is very annoying. When you're learning the fight you usually get to the point where you can do phase 1 in your sleep, but then end up doing it over and over again as you learn phase 2. The fact that Sindragosa is a long fight makes it that much worse.